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From FedoraProject

Fedora users and contributors frequently ask others in the community why certain items are not included in Fedora. This page is meant to provide some explanations for the most frequently requested exclusions.

If it is proprietary, it cannot be included in Fedora. (Binary firmware is the only exception to this)

If it is legally encumbered, it cannot be included in Fedora.

If it violates United States laws (specifically, Federal or applicable state laws), it cannot be included in Fedora.

Third party repositories often have more liberal licensing policies and contain software that has been excluded from the official Fedora software repository for various reasons. You can also find community support via Ask Fedora and use a search engine like Google to look for additional help. The proprietary software and drivers discussed may be available from the respective owners and other vendors. Fedora Project instead highly recommends that you support the right vendors and get hardware that can work with completely free and open source software and not restricted by Software Patents and other legal encumbrances.

MP3 Support

MP3 encoding support is not included in any Fedora package/application/library because of patents in
several regions including the United States. The patent holders are unwilling to give an unrestricted patent grant, as required by the GPL. This means that we cannot include MP3 encoding code, even as source. Other platforms might have paid the royalty and/or included proprietary software. Other Linux distributions not based in a region affected by the patent might ship MP3 encoders or they might have included proprietary software. However, Fedora cannot and does not include MP3 encoders in order to serve the goal of providing and supporting only free and open source software that is not restricted by software patents by default.

As of November 10, 2016, some MP3 decoding software is permitted in Fedora. There was a mysterious announcement by Christian Schaller of Red Hat that MP3 decoding support (but not encoding) was now allowed in Fedora using the mpeg123 library. The announcement stated that it might even be provided on Fedora Workstation 26 install media. Tom Callaway of Red Hat (@spotrh) tweeted "As of today, MP3 decoding software is permissible in Fedora." and posted on Fedora Legal "Red Hat has determined that it is now acceptable for Fedora to include MP3 decoding functionality (not specific to any implementation, or binding by any unseen agreement). Encoding functionality is not permitted at this time."

Fedora Suggests: If possible, use patent unrestricted formats such as Ogg Vorbis or Opus (lossy audio codecs that have better quality than MP3), or FLAC (a lossless audio codec).

NVIDIA Proprietary Graphics Drivers

The NVIDIA graphics drivers are proprietary, and many kernel developers consider this driver to violate the GPL license of the kernel. Fedora does not include proprietary software.

Fedora Suggests: Consider using the free and open source Nouveau driver instead or use a graphics adapter from Intel or AMD or any other manufacturer that provides full specifications and/or source code.

ATI Catalyst Proprietary Graphics Drivers

The ATI Catalyst graphics drivers are proprietary and many kernel developers consider this driver to violate the GPL license of the kernel. Fedora does not include proprietary software. Fedora does include the free and open source Radeon driver however.

Fedora Suggests: Consider using the free and open source Radeon driver instead.

NDISwrapper network driver

NDISwrapper works by bridging Windows drivers into kernel space; many kernel developers consider this to violate the GPL license of the kernel. Furthermore, NDISwrapper does not work with standard kernel features, such as 4K stacks, and exposes the user to binary-only drivers in kernel space that the user cannot modify or fix. Furthermore, NDISwrapper does not work at all without the Windows drivers, which 1) are not redistributable, and therefore cannot be shipped in Fedora, and 2) are not open source, and therefore will not be shipped in Fedora.

Fedora Suggests: Try using the in-kernel drivers that support many common wireless cards, such as Intel or Broadcom wireless adapters.

Real Media (and Player)

Real Media encoding and decoding support is not included in any Fedora application because it is heavily patented in several regions including the United States. The patent holder is unwilling to give an unrestricted patent grant, as required by the GPL. Other platforms might have paid the royalty, or included proprietary software. Other Linux distributions not based in a region affected by the patent might ship Real Media decoders and encoders. However, Fedora cannot and does not ship Real Media decoders and encoders in order to serve the goal of providing and supporting only free and open source software by default.

DVD Playback

DVD playback (of CSS encrypted DVDs) may be a violation of the United States DMCA , because it may be considered circumventing a copyright protection mechanism. Additionally, MPEG2 is a patented codec, so even DVDs without encryption cannot be played.

Fedora Suggests: Using patent unrestricted formats such as WebM or Ogg Theora is highly recommended when encoding videos.

Oracle's Java

Java is now under a free software license but still has some binary encumbrances which are being removed or replaced incrementally. Red Hat worked with Oracle to improve free and open source Java. Fedora 9 and above includes OpenJDK with encumbered portions replaced by the IcedTea Project and it is fully TCK compliant. Refer to the JavaFAQ for more details.

VMware

Although some VMware utilities such as open-vm-tools are free and open source, most VMware software is proprietary software. Fedora does not include proprietary software. Fedora includes and develops several virtualization technologies which can serve as an alternative.

Moonlight

Moonlight is currently a abandoned project. Even otherwise, there are serious concerns about Moonlight, due to Microsoft and Novell's public statements around its inclusion in their "covenant". In addition to that Groklaw has posted a FAQ from Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) on the issues with this patent "covenant". Accordingly, this technology (with, or without codecs), is considered too risky, and is not acceptable for inclusion in Fedora.

TrueCrypt

The TrueCrypt software is under a poor license, which is not only non-free, but has the potential to be actively dangerous to end users or distributors who agree to it, opening them to possible legal action even if they abide by all of the licensing terms, depending on the intent of the upstream copyright holder. Fedora continues to make efforts to try to work with the TrueCrypt upstream to fix all of the issues in their license so that it can be considered Free, but have not yet been successful.

Fedora Suggests:cryptsetup allows to map existing Truecrypt device since version 1.6 (Fedora 18). For full functionality tcplay is an independently developed TrueCrypt-compatible program under the BSD license. It is available in the official Fedora repository. It is recommended if you need TrueCrypt compatibility.

cdrtools

At one point in time cdrtools was entirely licensed under the terms of the GPL (and included in Red Hat Linux, the precursor to Fedora), but later, most of the codebase was relicensed to CDDL (but notably, not all of it), resulting in a codebase which is an incompatible mix of the GPL and the CDDL. The cdrtools upstream is aware of these concerns, but holds a set of unorthodox opinions on licensing which are not shared by the FSF or Red Hat Legal, so it is unlikely that this situation will ever be resolved in a fashion that would result in cdrtools being acceptable for Fedora. For more details, see: